


Past Shards

by pontiffpainticus



Category: Homestuck, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Red Spinel is of course Aradia, ruminations on fusion and peace in the hereafter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pontiffpainticus/pseuds/pontiffpainticus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red Spinel was brought to earth to fulfill a duty.  The war has been over for thousands of years, but she thinks that this is too important to give up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Shards

Plink, plink, plink. 

The sounds were always distinctive enough that she could recognize them by ear. 

Plink, plink, plink.

Not that she really did have ears. That was an idiom, specific to species of creatures that had ears. Humans were the most common ones that she could think of, but she never had too much to do with humans. Just a sort of distant understanding, she would occasionally see them and pass through their lives, not staying for too long, because how could she possibly do that? To them it was their entire course of existence, but to her, it was a heartbeat. A heartbeat that she didn’t really have. 

Plink, plink... plink.

Red Spinel’s weapon wasn’t really a weapon. It was a music box. A clear quartz whose melody was hard to follow, plinking away at a tune that seemed far more mournful than the tinny notes had any right to be. She could follow its rhythm with ease, but that was only after a lifetime (or very many smaller human lifetimes) of practicing. She could hear the truth in each note, each sound carrying an absolute truth from the past, and an absolute certainty from the future.

She wasn’t very large. Her hair fell as long as she was tall, thick and curly and kinky and knotted, enough that it was everywhere at once, while still somehow being contained to her plump, compact little body. The gems didn’t take much notice of her. She took notice of them, of course. Colonization. Warfare. And then, of course. Death. They had conscripted her to serve as what was determined to be a maid, cleaning up valuables after the battlefields were abandoned, as no one would dare walk through the fields when the fires still raged and the shattered gems made weak attempts to re-form with incomplete souls.

Plink, plink, plink.

And then the war ended. And the gems from the Homeworld were gone, and soon enough, the Crystal gems were gone too, down to a number that she could easily count on one hand. They cared about the earth, she couldn’t deny it. But none of them ever realized what they could do for the ones who had departed.

Spinel set her music box on the ground beside her, sitting cross-legged in the middle of an enormous strawberry field. The notes dutifully plinked away as she set both hands upon the ground, closing her eyes as she reached out.

_Where, where do I report, where do I report, it’s urgent, i can’t wait_

_Where am I, where did they all go, I don’t understand,_

_I need to,_

_I need to report,_

Spinel curled her lips into a faint smile.

_You’re lost,_ she said. She didn’t have to move her false-lips to speak. It was the music box. Each note a message, and each note just the right frequency for the soul to understand.

_I need to report, they’ve got us flanked,_

_I need to pass the message along, there are light cannons on the cliff,_

_I need to report immediately or we’re all,_

_Going_

_to_

_die_

The notes were soothing and sad, aching and sweet. _It’s okay, she said, you’re dead already. You don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to worry about anything._

Spinel felt the shifting underneath. It was trying to take form again. Trying to be something rather than nothing. The dirt ripped open in front of her. A claw, maybe? It was a sharp, jagged, geometric thing, but it flashed. Flickered. It was wrong, the wrong form. Rage and frustration filled the air as it grasped blindly. It couldn’t remember, it couldn’t feel. It was a hollow shell that struggled, flickering and flashing and growing as it tried to become more, remember its shape and growing increasingly wrong, unable to shift back or stop growing and already tearing up the peaceful hillside. 

Spinel placed a hand upon the thing that was once a gem. She smiled.

The music continued to play. _I don’t know if I can find them, she said. But I’ve found others. They might be here. And if they aren’t, she said, I’ll look. You did everything right. Now it’s time to let the others reach the conclusion this timeline has dictated._

_It’ll be okay,_ she said.  
Her musical notes were met with silence. Too much effort trying to become something again, not enough memory or soul in its gem to fully understand or respond. But it stopped its raging and uncontrolled growth.

And in a second, 

It stopped being, entirely.

An almost-empty gem fell in a puff of smoke. Spinel was quick enough to catch it in her palm, running her thumb over the surface. 

She said, _it’s okay, you didn’t know that would happen._

The gem did not respond to that.

She said, _you can join the ones I have. The ones that are with me._ Then she said, _it’s confusing, being like this. Because you can’t remember, but you don’t know what you don’t remember. You don’t have enough power, she said, to feel anything new._

The gem was still silent, the clear white geode sitting still in her palm.

She said, _you won’t be alone. You won’t be alive, but you won’t be nothing. And you won’t be anything worse than what you remember, even if you don’t remember all of it. I can make you a part of me, like the others. if that’s something you want._

There was a flicker of life in the gem.

__Please, it said. _I didn’t stop them in time,_ it said.

_I just want to leave this moment._

Spinel nodded in understanding. She adjusted the tune of the music box-- there was a crank, a lever, and a few other complicated controls, and she could use them with her mind alone, but the physical action with her false-limbs seemed to provide an additional comfort for the dead ones. The music box sang a melody as Spinel closed her eyes, swaying like reeds in the wind. She hummed along to a song she knew well, the vibrations in her throat matching the beat and tune perfectly. It was slow, but steady. Like a heartbeat. She didn’t have a heart, of course. But she had a gem at the core of her being, and it too pulsed with the force of life itself. The gem on her chest began to glow, a dim red light that seemed to match perfectly the setting sun. 

The crystal in her palm felt a spark of power, an understanding that it had thought was severed utterly from its being. It would have thought this was some mockery or joke. But it understood. It shimmered brightly as Spinel held it close to her chest. A flash of light.  
And then it disappeared from her hand. She reached down slowly to retrieve her music-box from the ground, the last few notes winding down to utter silence. Her short legs didn’t take her very far very quickly, and it was a good thing she had so much time to spare. She had to find the next. And the next after that. No one knew how many gems were destroyed in the war. The number was incalculable. 

A silvery wisp hung behind her as she walked. It was not alone, of course. There were thousands of them, invisible to all but each other, and united by a single common element.

None of them had bodies, nor a physical place on Spinel’s form for their gem to fuse to. But they were there. Sharing what little mind they had left, and sharing what power the red gemstone had left them. The air hung silently over the strawberry fields. 

It had been thousands of years since the gem had been broken. It never saw it coming, but it could never stop, reliving that moment, those last few seconds of utter panic before being obliterated by pure light. Those moments were gone, now. Spinel began to wind her music box again, and all of the wisps bobbed along shortly behind her. 

The silence was broken again, and while the tune was so strangely mournful. The wisp did not mind, however. It knew it was broken. It knew it was dead. But it felt, for perhaps the first time it could remember, at peace.

And that was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Written real quick with no proofs, but hopefully still worth a look. Suddenly having lots of feelings about Aradia Megido and broken gems.


End file.
